Wednesday, February 22, 2017

With the new Trump
Administration making very significant and controversial moves to limit the
influx of people from seven Muslim-majority nations in the name of protecting
the homeland, a study by the CATO Institute looks at the real
risk of death from terrorism on United States soil and helps us put into perspective the "risk from abroad".

The authors of the study
looked at the 41 year period from January 1, 1975 to December 31, 2015, a
timeframe that includes the influx of Cuban and Vietnamese refugees which,
given the current state of paranoia in Washington, would now be considered "high
risk" immigrants. The study identifies foreign-born terrorists who
were either convicted of committing or planning a terrorist attack on U.S. soil
and then links them with the visa that they were issued and the number of
people that they murdered in their attacks. It also includes terrorists
who were discovered trying to enter the United States using forged immigration
documents as well as asylum seekers. The analysis excludes native-born
American terrorists except where the information is used for comparative
purposes.

The main source materials
used includes:

1.) "Terrorism Since 9/11:
The American cases" edited by John Mueller.

2.) Fordham University
Centre on National Security's compilation of the trials for members of ISIS in
the United States.

3.) The Congressional
Research Service report from 2013 entitled "American Jihadist Terrorism:
Combating a Complex Threat".

4.) The Global Terrorism
Database maintained by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism
and Response to Terrorism at the University of Maryland.

5.) The RAND Database of
Worldwide Terrorism Incidents covering the years from 1968 to 2009.

In addition, the authors
used data supplied by the New American Foundation, Mother Jones, the
Investigative Project on Terrorism and research by Dr. Charles Kurzman at the
University of North Carolina as well as news stories, court documents and
government reports.

Now, let's get to the
data. From 1975 to the end of 2015, we have the following statistics:

- over the forty-one year period, there were 154
foreign-born terrorists who committed acts of terrorism that led to death of American citizens in the United States. Of these, 54 were lawful permanent
residents, 34 were tourists, 20 were refugees, 10 were illegal
immigrants, 9 were students, 4 were asylum seekers, 3 were from Visa Waiver
Program nations and 1 was a K-1 fiancee visa. The visas for 9 terrorists
could not be determined. As you can see from this data, only 6.5 percent
of foreign-born terrorists were illegal immigrants over the 41 year period.

- over the forty-one year period, there were 3,024 people
murdered by foreign-born terrorists with 98.6 percent of those being murdered
on September 11, 2001. There were two other spikes in deaths over the
rest of the period with 6 people being killed in the 1993 World Trade Center
bombing and a combined 19 people that were killed in 2015 in the Chattanooga
shooting on July 16, 2015 (5 people) and the San Bernardino shooting on
December 2, 2015 (14 people).

- over the forty-one year
period, the annual chance that an American would be murdered in a terrorist
attack by a foreign-born terrorist was 1 in 3,609,709.

- over the forty-one year
period, the annual chance that an American would be murdered in a terrorist
attack committed by a refugee was 1 in 3.64 billion.

- over the forty-one year
period, of the 768,000 murders committed in the United States, 3,024 or 0.39
percent were committed by foreign-born terrorists.

- over the forty-one year
period, the U.S. murder rate declined from a high of 10.17 per 100,000 in 1980
to a low of 4.45 per 100,000 in 2015. By comparison, the 1975 to 2015
murder rate by foreign-born terrorists averaged 0.026 per 100,000 with a high
of 1.057 per 100,000 in 2001, thanks to 9/11. In other words, from
1975 to 2015, the annual chance of being murdered in the United States was 252.9
times as great as the chance of dying in an attack committed by a foreign-born
terrorist on U.S. soil.

Here is a table that
summarizes the odds of dying in an attack by a foreign-born terrorist:

Here is a graph comparing
the overall U.S. murder rate to the murder rate at the hands of foreign-born terrorists
over the period from 1975 to 2015:

Interestingly, over the
forty-one year period, there were 408 Americans killed by native-born
terrorists with the largest number (168) being killed in a single incident in
Oklahoma City in 1995. In the post-9/11 period, 24 people were
murdered on U.S. soil by a total of 5 foreign-born terrorists with 65 other
foreign-born terrorists attempting to commit or actually committing acts of
terrorism that did not result in fatalities. During the same period, 80
people were killed by native-born American terrorists.

Given that, since
September 11, 2001 government frequently reminds us that the use of
extraordinary measures are necessary to protect us from the foreign-born
terrorist hordes that are trampling each other to gain access to American soil,
it is interesting to see from this study that Americans run a far greater risk
of death at the hands of one of their own than they do at the hands of someone
born elsewhere, particularly since 9/11. Governments have long used fear
to control the masses, a methodology that has become well-honed by Washington over the past 15
years.

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About Me

I have been an avid follower of the world's political and economic scene since the great gold rush of 1979 - 1980 when it seemed that the world's economic system was on the verge of collapse. I am most concerned about the mounting level of government debt and the lack of political will to solve the problem. Actions need to be taken sooner rather than later when demographic issues will make solutions far more difficult. As a geoscientist, I am also concerned about the world's energy future; as we reach peak cheap oil, we need to find viable long-term solutions to what will ultimately become a supply-demand imbalance.